Top-Rated Courses on How to Improve Social Media Marketing Skills

As Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit, says:

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is. It is what consumers tell each other it is.”

Indeed, consumer opinion, including what and how they feel about a particular brand, is what drives businesses these days. To understand these whats and hows, marketers need to ensure that they are present on social media. This is where all types of conversations are taking place amongst consumers, including several worthy insights.

The content that is being shared across various platforms, including hashtags, trends, likes, followers, comments, keywords, videos, ads, and a lot more collectively, makes for usable insights for marketers.

A single click from a potential consumer gives valuable insight about their interests that can help marketers understand how to approach them to buy your products or enroll in your services.

For example, if someone is following a yoga page on Facebook, it means they are interested in that particular activity. Now, if you are a store that offers yoga mats, gears, and accessories, this is where you can find potential customers for your business.

However, before you start collecting all the information, it is important to thoroughly understand the virtual world of social media. And there is nothing better than opting for some real education on this complex subject. 

Here are some top-rated courses to help you master your social media skills: 

Top Social Media Marketing Courses To Ace

1. Social Media Marketing MASTERY by Udemy 

The courses offered by Udemy are an introduction to SEO and social media advertising. These social media marketing courses act as an advanced primer for automating and managing your social media accounts. With this course, one can learn social media marketing for more than 10 platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Google, YouTube, Tumblr, WordPress, and Blogger. Created by Course Envy, it also offers lifetime access to lectures by ace practitioners.  

Price: INR 8,640

Facts to consider:

• The course includes 9.5 hours of on-demand video, 38 articles, 28 downloadable resources, accessibility on mobile and TV, and a certificate of completion at the end of the program.  
• With the help of this course, one can create highly optimized and high-quality paid ads on all social media platforms.
• The other creators you can opt for are Benjamin Wilson with 15 courses, Darius Mora with 3 courses, and Nik Swami with 13 courses. The other bit-sized free social media marketing lessons offered by the platform are how to create a custom audience on Facebook, take action on social media handles, target audience, and monetize Tumblr.

2. What is Social? by Coursera 

Offered by Northwestern University that has campuses in Chicago, Illinois, and Qatar, the course has been designed to give access to the tools, insights, knowledge, and skills for immediate results in businesses. This one is a first in the six-course specialization. If you are a paid learner, you will receive additional content beyond the course basics in a tool kit that includes big data from Alessandro Acquisti and a set of studies done by IBM on social marketing strategies and engagement with bottom line profits. This course will help you leverage consumers who are of the highest value to you.

Price: Starts with a 7-day free trial followed by INR 3,595 per month after the trial ends.

Facts to consider: 

• It takes around 7 hours to complete the 100% online course.
• Coursera also offers financial aid for those who wish to learn but have second thoughts about the price.
• This social media marketing course with a certificate has shareable certificates and is focused on self-paced learning.

3. Social Media Content Strategy by Learn from Fiverr 

Aiming to narrate the concept of marketing funnels and setting objectives with key indicators, the program teaches how to identify the target audience. With the help of this course, you can conduct in-depth customer research with the help of Facebook Insights and Survey Monkey. 

Price: $46

Facts to consider: 

• The course has 9 chapters, including quizzes at multiple levels. It provides unlimited access to the course material.
• After the course, one can access a badge that showcases your expertise on your profile page.
• It aims to define your content strategy with a strong mission statement and, in turn, execute your strategy by planning and copywriting in advance.
• You will be able to create content that gets the attention of your audience immediately.

4. Social Media Marketing Course Online by BrainStation 

The course helps you develop a comprehensive social media strategy, the plan paid and organic efforts across multiple social platforms, and target relevant audiences with engaging advertisements that drive traffic. This is one of the top social media marketing courses. 

Price: $2,450

Facts to consider:

• The course helps understand the overall goal of content marketing and social media advertising with key performance indicators.
• Divided into three units, the course includes subjects like organic and paid campaigns, ad units, targeting influencers, and increasing growth and engagement.
• You will gain hands-on experience by building measurable social media campaigns, working with social media management platforms, Facebook and Instagram business manager, and LinkedIn campaign manager.

5. Social Media Monitoring by Udemy 

Designed exclusively for marketers, sales professionals, customer service representatives, PR professionals, and recruiters, the course teaches key concepts and techniques of keyword phrase filtering.

Price: Free

Facts to consider:

• The course primarily aims at telling you to research and validate keyword phrases for monitoring.
• Along with the future of social media monitoring, it talks about monitoring strategies for different social media platforms, i.e., Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  
• You will be learning concepts and techniques of keyword phase filtering.
• Sharing your social media monitoring dashboard with colleagues and clients
• Researching and validating the right keyword phrases to monitor.

6. Social Media Marketing Trends by LinkedIn Learning 

In this continuously evolving virtual world, business owners must adapt to the changing trends and modern social media practices. This course by LinkedIn Learning teaches you which social media marketing trends matter and how you can use them to drive engagement and sales for your business. 

The program focuses on social media trends, influencer marketing, dynamic ads, and social causes, along with other new marketing trends. 

The course highlights the top trends, including the next evolution of dynamic ads, influencer marketing, and social shopping and how brands should advocate themselves on relevant social media causes. Experts help you understand the most recent developments on social media and get more meaningful results from your marketing efforts by exploring augmented reality features on social media and trends on video platforms such as Youtube and Tik Tok.

Price: LinkedIn Learning offers a free one month trial

Facts to consider:

• With accessibility on phone and tablet, the course provides a shareable certificate of completion.
• After completing the course, one can become a professional on internet trends, social media marketing, and digital trends.  

7. Advanced Social Advertising Training by Hootsuite Academy 

The certification course offers video tutorials that teach setting campaign goals, the use of remarketing and lookalike audiences, building and testing social ads, and measuring the impact of ad campaigns.

Price: $249

Facts to consider:

• The 4.5-hour course offers an industry-recognized certification that shows off your skillset.
• It provides a permanent online certificate to showcase your expertise to link to your blog, website, and any other online profile.
• You can secure Hootsuite’s advanced social advertising certification by passing a 50 question online exam testing your knowledge of core principles of using social media in advertising.
• It consists of seven lessons: 

1. Social advertising landscape
2. Setting the stage for a successful social media ad campaign
3. Advancing best practices for targeting social advertisements
4. Creating and iterating on social ads
5. Bidding and buying social ads
6. Tracking the impact and ROI of your social ads
7. How Hootsuite helps with social advertising and finally Hootsuite advanced social advertising certification exam.

8. Instagram Influencer Marketing Course by Udemy 

A specialization course in Instagram Marketing for Instagram influencers is a complete guide to starting a business with your Instagram account and monetizing it.

Price: INR 6,400

Facts to consider:

• The course includes 17 downloadable resources, full lifetime access on mobile and TV, and a certificate of completion.
• With the help of this program, one can learn how to convert Instagram followers into paying customers. 
• As a product marketer, you can use Instagram marketing as a promotional tool to share the features and benefits of new releases.

9. Facebook Certified Digital Marketing Associate by Facebook Blueprint 

Offered by Facebook, the course includes a 90-minute exam to evaluate the skills you developed. Curated specially for entry-level marketers like students and job seekers, the program covers foundational advertising concepts for Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.

Price: Between $99 to $150 depending on the level of the certification

Facts to consider:

• The exam is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, German, and Korean.
• An examination outline is provided with subjects and details. One has to prepare for this before appearing for the exam.
• By getting certified, you will be having an extra edge for landing jobs or impressing clients.
• You will be learning the latest changes that Facebook has made to ads and the latest updates to Instagram ads.

10.  Content, Advertising & Social IMC by Google Digital Unlocked 

The virality factor of any content plays a significant role when it comes to marketing. This course offered by Google focuses on this virality while teaching content, advertising, and social integrated marketing communications (IMC).

Price: Free

Facts to consider:

• Created by Northwestern University and powered by Coursera, the course is divided into four modules covered in 8 hours.
• This course includes an overview of the Integrated Marketing Communication strategy for social media platforms. 
• The course includes a module where you will learn how to develop and measure KPIs for your marketing plan on social media. 
• Each course is like an interactive textbook that features quizzes, pre-recorded videos, and projects. You can connect with thousands of other learners to debate ideas, discuss course material and get help mastering concepts.

We hope you got an idea of what you want to learn and from where. Keeping your business type and requirements in mind, you can now pick any of these courses to give wings to your entrepreneurship journey into the digital and social world. 

FAQs